First published 2025
Libby Steadman runs a gristmill in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley while her Confederate husband remains missing, possibly dead in a Union prison. The year is 1864, and control of the territory shifts constantly between North and South. Libby operates the mill with her teenage niece, a hired hand, and his wife, producing grain that the Confederate Army takes for its own use. She wakes each morning wondering if her land will become a battlefield. Then Libby discovers Captain Jonathan Weybridge of the Vermont Brigade left for dead in a neighbor's house, his hand and leg bones shattered. The Union officer is her enemy, but he is also dying. Libby faces an impossible choice: let him die alone or risk charges of treason by nursing him back to health. If she saves his life, she might smuggle him across Union lines and trade his freedom for information about her missing husband. Bohjalian crafts a story about two people finding their humanity amid the brutal violence of war.
Genres: romance, american-civil-war, historical-fiction, 19th-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, suspenseful
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, Union
Period: 1864
320 pages · Hardcover · Doubleday
Content warnings: violence, war